They call him the Juzek Killer. He found them all through their Craigslist adverts for Juzek instruments, he would lure them into his underground recording studio under the pretence of purchasing their instruments. That was the last time anyone saw them in one piece again.

I understand these things must be kept quiet, also no one should know that Juzek was a distant relative of Antonio Stradivari via Antonio's secret love affair with the widow Gabriella and their subsequent love child little Guido. Poor Guido never really knew his father, but somehow violin making was in his blood. He ventured further into the heart of Europe to find his destiny and never looked back. Praha matka měst!

Vpn fun.
Oleg "Alex" Gartsman, the son of an engineer and a doctor, plays the violin, the piano and the guitar. He plays the violin so well that he has sat in with symphonies from Savannah to Boston. He dreams about opening a violin institute that would include a school and a museum.
He speaks English, Italian and Russian. He cares more about "the comforts of the soul than material comforts." He owns a violin shop and an import-export business in New York City.
He also owns a store in Hampton where he sells violins, cellos, flutes, saxophones, clarinets, 19th-century ivory figurines and 100-year-old porcelain jugs and vases. That store also is the place to go if you need a handgun, a rifle or a high-interest loan.
Gartsman, a 34-year-old Newport News resident who left the Ukraine 10 years ago, is - you guessed it - a pawn broker. He knows a lot of people consider pawn brokers sleazy and dishonest. He insists he's not like that, and he wants to open a pawnshop in Newport News.
"This story is not about pawnshops or business," Gartsman said. "It's about people's perceptions of things, about how people think."
Tonight, the Newport News City Council is scheduled to decide whether to give Gartsman a permit to open a pawnshop in a vacant building that once housed a Kentucky Fried Chicken restaurant on the corner of Jefferson Avenue and Ivy Farms Road.
A lot of people who live in and around the Ivy Farms neighborhood don't want that to happen. They've called their pastors and asked them to speak out against the pawnshop at the council meeting. They've predicted the pawnshop will attract "undesirables."
"Pawnshops attract a group of people that we already have too many of down there," said Tricia Armstrong, who lives in Hampton but has friends in Ivy Farms and has become an unofficial spokeswoman for those who oppose the pawnshop. "People are in desperate situations when they need to pawn things. People in desperate situations do desperate things."
Some of those who live in Ivy Farms predict burglaries and thefts will increase in Ivy Farms after Gartsman's pawnshop opens. They think crooks will take their stolen goods to Gartsman to sell. Gartsman said that during the seven years he has owned Langley Pawnshop in Hampton, 20 of the 6,000 transactions involved stolen property.
Ivy Farms resident Brenda Rhodes, who met Gartsman recently, said, "Mr. Gartsman sounds like a great guy to me. I have no problem with him." But she has a problem with Gartsman's plan to open a pawnshop near Ivy Farms. Rhodes said she found out her 15-year-old son bought a saber at American Enterprises Pawnshop on Jefferson Avenue, and she doesn't want Gartsman to sell weapons to children.
Gartsman said he doesn't allow children in his Hampton store unless they are with their parents, and he promised he would not sell guns or knives in the Newport News store if the City Council allows him to open it.
Nick Autolino, who owns American Enterprises Pawnshop, also opposes Gartsman's pawnshop, admittedly for selfish reasons. American Enterprises and Gartsman's shop would practically be next-door neighbors.
"When I found out he wanted to do it, I called him and said, 'Alex, what's the matter with you? Why do you want to open a pawnshop next to me?'" Autolino said.
He said if Gartsman gets permission to open another pawnshop, he can live with it.
"I'm 70 years old," Autolino said. "I have enough money."
Gartsman, who is married and has two children, got into the pawnshop business, he said, because he didn't have enough money. He said he couldn't earn enough money as a professional musician in Virginia or in the Soviet-controlled Ukraine, where he was born and reared.
But that's not why he left the Ukraine. Gartsman and his wife, Irina, left, in 1989, because they disliked communism. After they left, the Jewish emigrants spent a year in Italy before they found a group in the United States that would sponsor them. That group was the United Jewish Community of the Virginia Peninsula.
Gartsman's skills got him jobs with symphonies up and down the East Coast, but he couldn't make enough money to pay the bills. So Gartsman, who came from a wealthy family in the Ukraine and operated a manufacturing business there, turned to business here - the pawnshop business. He has operated Langley Pawn for seven years.
Although he likes business, he loves music.
"The violin is a special instrument to me," he said. "It is very difficult to handle, but when it is played properly, it sounds very close to the human voice."
If Gartsman doesn't get permission to open a pawnshop in Newport News, he said he might sell the building, rent it or open another type of store there. He said he would gladly accept any decision from the City Council.
"This would not be the end of the world for me," he said. "I've got a hundred other plans in my head. To me, this is just one plan. It's not going to kill me if it doesn't happen."
- Mark Di Vincenzo can be reached at 247-4719 or by e-mail at mdivincenzo@dailypress.com
LEND AN EAR
- The Newport News City Council is scheduled to meet at 7:30 p.m. today in council chambers at City Hall, 2400 Washington Ave. Shortly after the meeting begins, the council is expected to consider. Alex Gartsman's request to open a pawn shop.